#either way their reunion is going to destroy me 😭

[fromtheseventhhell]

If we get a scene of Arya crowning Jon, it needs to parallel the scene of Jon gifting Needle to Arya for me. A personal scene between the two of them that's about their unconditional love for each other. It isn't about Jon becoming King but about Arya supporting him in the same way he supported her. "Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not the arms" come full circle with two outcasts supporting each other occupying spaces that society says they can't

[badbatcher-99]

NEW TWEET FROM OUR LORD AND SAVIOR (and reviewer)

Spoilers below: Just my theories

So I always thought infiltration was going to be Rex/clone rebellion centered and then the follow up extraction was going to involve the bad batch getting involved. From Jennifer’s tweet we are def going back to Tantis or atleast getting a glimpse at what’s happening on Tantis. This could just be me overthinking the picture.

Now a lot of people have been speculating that these are the episodes where pabu is invaded and the marauder is destroyed. Star Wars official did post about Pabu the other day and could be teasing us about it. Also the tweet from Danielle can also support this but we dont really know the tone of “I wasn’t ready for this episode” but with the way good things have been happening so far, her response “I wasn’t ready” implies that the tone shift from the last episode to these episodes is dramatic and probably on the more angsty side.

If pabu does get invaded tomorrow then this really WILL be crazy cause how the hell did this happen?! Who leaked pabu??? Shep says that the island hasn’t had such seismic activity in 30 years, so they haven’t been found out in that long of a time. But the bad batch going to and from there is def a risk to the island. It’ll be interesting to see how that info got leaked and how the bad batch will be able to escape.

I’ll admit I didn’t think pabu would get invaded until later on in the series but looking back over the videos we do have and from what we have so far, it makes sense that this would happen early on. The bad batch have the option to live on the island for the rest of their lives. They have no reason to go on missions, as long as the island is unknown to the empire, omega is safe. So how do the story tellers deal with that 😈 we take that option away. So pabu gets found out, which leads to omega getting captured again and yay we have conflict 👏 👏 👏

I have an awful theory that if infiltration is Rex/rebellion centered… that it’ll involve echo and that somehow during that episode… maybe his ship gets captured and that’s how the empire finds out about pabu. ORRRR oh maaaan this is even worse 😭 infiltration and extraction aren’t necessarily about the same subject. Infiltration could refer to the EMPIRE infiltrating the clone rebellion!!! We already know the empire is capable of creating those assassin clones, it would be incredibly easy to have a clone disguise himself and infiltrate Rex’s group of clones 😭 THATS the infiltration. That leads to pabus location being exposed. That leads to omega getting captured. As for extraction. That’s either extracting omega or extracting the location of tantis I’m not sure. A brainwashed clone infiltrating Rex’s rebellion, getting the coordinates to the empire, the empire invading pabu, the bad batch meeting up with Rex, and the bad batch extracting info of omega seems like a LOT of cover. Of course the brainwashed clone thing could happen off screen and we only see the awful result of that happening. Idk this is very very interesting. If pabu gets invaded in the first episode then I can see the first episode ending in a cliff hanger aka the invasion happens at the end of the episode with the bad batch escaping with phee. But as for how that episode starts… I have no idea. Really hope they don’t give us a happy episode that just crumbles apart 😭

What’s really interesting to me is seeing the real Lula and the straw Lula together. The straw Lula may represent emerie and the real Lula represents omega. So either a reunion of the two or the first episode parallels their stories. It would really really REALLY suck if emerie plays a “I escaped omega, I need your help. You were right I want to be free” card just as a way to infiltrate the bad batch and omega is too trusting so of course she doesn’t doubt emerie 😭 and emerie just rats them all out. Oh god no…. “You’re too trusting” “maybe you don’t trust enough” oh my gosh I can’t 😭

Star Wars also posted this on Tik tok… which I don’t know how Cody would be involved with the next few episodes. Hopefully he found his way back to Rex (so many people are saying he is clone X -_- like hello he went AWOL with crosshair. But I can also see that has the empires way of covering up that clones are being kidnapped to be experimented on womp womp.)

Also … looking at the episode list… I can’t actually see any episode title that would fit Pan getting invaded. Bad territory maybe… I def think harbinger is ventress return. She’s force sensitive, she prob has some visions or something and def has some bad news maybe idk.

Apparently omega and ventress are supposed to interact. So it’ll be really really REALLY interesting if omega gets captured in infiltration and then extracted in … extraction. I wonder if there will be another time jump between these episodes too. I like how we don’t spend a lot of time with omega being captured. We get one episode that pretty much sums up how bad her captured times are and then she’s rescued. (Aka her time in those places served its narrative purpose and we have no need to hang around any longer. )it’ll be interesting to see if that’s the case here or if she is in the empires hands for long.

I know this was long but I can’t wait to see what happens.

[demigodofhoolemere]

Things I can't stop thinking about from Steven and Vicki's Tales of the TARDIS episode

- This reunion. Seeing them together again kills me anyway, but when you look at the context of the last time they saw each other, both of them could have easily thought the other might be dead. The last Vicki saw of Steven he was bleeding out and slipping away from consciousness, and to Steven he woke up to learn that they'd left Vicki in a city that was being razed to the ground and its inhabitants slaughtered. There wasn’t a proper goodbye and neither could have known for sure whether the other had survived. These are two people who must have spent decades of their lives just hoping and praying that the other was okay.

They take each other's presence in like it’s a miracle. I don’t know if they intentionally wrote/acted this with that particular context of their last time together in mind, but nevertheless it can very easily be read that way since their reactions lend themselves to it so well.

- ^ In particular, Steven’s voice breaks in a way that absolutely destroys me.

- Is this girlish giggling not the most Vicki thing you’ve ever seen?

- There are certain moments that just really hit as, ‘This is them.’ I mean, look at her. That’s Vicki. It keeps blowing my mind.

- Steven is SO happy to see her again, oh my word. “I’ve got my little sister back!” is gonna live in my mind for the rest of my life. To have that dynamic acknowledged in those words and to see how much they love each other kills me. Look at this unreserved fluff. This means the world to me.

- Hearing that they’ve had wonderfully happy lives is so nice. Vicki could have been dealing with all kinds of turmoil given the time she chose to stay in, and with Steven’s luck he could have had literally anything happen to him, like Big Finish decided to do. I’m so glad they’ve been given full and happy lives onscreen, that Vicki has done so well in such a wildly different time and that Steven’s bad luck curse is finally broken. (The trauma curse is broken at least — it’s too much of a stretch for me to believe that he wouldn’t still have mundane bad luck lol.)

- Someone needs to either sue Peter for these faces or give him an award. There is so much emotion going on here and I can barely handle it. And knowing how much Peter truly loved this show and his time on it, I get the feeling some of this is real for him.

- “Vicki, this might not be his TARDIS. I mean, can you imagine the Doctor wearing something like this?” Well I’m sure as heck imagining it now! Someone PLEASE make fan art of One in Six’s coat.

- Their reverence for the Doctor’s pocket watch. Vicki is so happy and clutches it with joy and Steven stares at it and strokes it for a good minute. 💗

- Love having some skeptical Steven wondering if it could be a trap and warning Vicki to be careful. His older brother mode got reactivated so fast. And, “Don’t be such a spoilsport!” is so delightfully Vicki.

- Space helmet for a cow!!!

- “Well, it had been a busy week.” Lol, more like a busy (or not so busy) 2 years on Mechanus! You’re more than excused!

- I know it was naturally gonna happen because they’re going over The Time Meddler but I love the references to the Monk, and I love that we also get a subtle reference to The Daleks’ Master Plan out of it.

- Another one of those moments that just strikes you. Look at him.

- “He rescued me. I was an orphan and he became my family. I became the granddaughter he’d lost.” 😭

- Vicki’s little, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” dance is so perfectly Vicki. It warms my heart how well-characterized they both are here.

- Anyone else see this and immediately start crying thinking about her putting her hands over her eyes in The Chase? Just me?

- Steven’s face when he agrees with her about wishing more than anything to see the Doctor again. I love his relationship with the Doctor so much, it kills me to see him emotional about it, to see how much he still loves him after all this time. But on top of it, once again I feel like there’s some genuine Peter in here who misses Bill. You can see in a lot of interviews, panels, commentaries and so on that Peter really truly cared about Bill as his friend and is still protective over him as a person and his character. When Steven makes this face in agreement about wishing he could just see the Doctor again, I feel something else very real in it.

- Look at them. Just look at them. No further comment.

- Vicki’s face hearing the Doctor’s laugh is my face.

I still haven’t been able to get through this without crying at his laugh. I don’t really have the words for how magical and touching it is that they included him in that way. It tugs on my heartstrings so hard.

[naavispider]

Oh god oh NOOO as soon as you said “emotional reunion scene with Quaritch my mind went to all kinds of places 😭 I hope we get that in the next movie fr 🙏 what would your interpretation of their reunion scene look like btw?

I've been trying to think about how they're going to do this for a while now. It starts with theorising what would happen to Quaritch when he returns to the RDA. In my mind, he should be court-marshalled, but I don't think they'd do that for Plot ™️ reasons. I imagine that since he represents such a huge investment the higher ups don't want to waste that, so he'd probably have to undergo some sort of rehabilitation, which I don't think would be pleasant for him. Then, I think they'd sent him into the Ash Clan potentially on purpose? To maybe try and create some sort of allyship? Since Quaritch is potentially dressing like a member of the clan, he may try and go in undercover and gain their help to take down the Metkayina/Jake Sully (this is based on the assumption that the Ash People are antagonists)? If this is the case, I think the first time Quaritch and Spider see each other again could be when Spider and Lo'ak (and anybody else) are captured by the Ash People.

I love the emotional stakes this raises, because they might both have to pretend to not know each other. Maybe Spider wants to out Quaritch by telling them he's a Sky Person, but he knows they would probably kill him? Either way, the other Sullys are gonna be shocked to see Quaritch is still alive and I don't think Quaritch will be the one to tell them that Spider saved him.

As much as I wish they'd get a full on, private reunion, I think it's more likely to be in a hostage situation, or other combative moment that leaves little time for talking - just some dramatic looks as the camera focuses on a close up of each of their faces 💀 The time for talking will come when either one of them is captured by the other side.

That is my prediction for A3, but if it were up to me, Quaritch would fly back to Awa'atlu before the RDA could reassemble itself to strike back against the Metkayina, essentially deserting the organisation and committing treason. He'd return to the village when he heard the RDA was going to mobilise Sec Ops to advance and destroy the whole village, which would obviously include Spider.

So he flies back to warn the people (obviously though his main mission is to get Spider back). They immediately capture him, paralleling when Jake returns to Hometree to warn the Omatikaya about the assault in A1. Quaritch is dragged in, bound, and Spider runs over with Kiri, Tuk and Lo'ak to see what all the commotion is about. As he realises it's Quaritch, we have a dramatic shot of both of them meeting eyes, before Spider starts to panic about what he's going to say.

None of the adults understand how he is alive, and Quaritch isn't going to rat Spider out, so he doesn't tell them how, just insists that the RDA will be here soon. Jake is confused AF why Quaritch even cares, until he catches the recom staring at Spider. Quaritch and Spider quickly try to hide it, but Jake has twigged it.

Maybe after the adults have interrogated Quaritch, Spider isn't allowed to see him. That would be for extra added angst, and would make for an even more complicated dynamic between Jake and Spider. Neytiri obvs has to be held back from murdering him on sight. Idk what happens from then on 😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

I think they're more likely to have a heart to heart at least halfway/two thirds through the movie, like the tension will build all the way through until they finally get their moment to catch up, and that's the scene Jack Champion was talking about.

It's so stupid to even try to guess at this stage but hey! I'm trying! I will be proven a fool and a clown, and that's okay 😌

[markantonys]

knife of dreams prologue-chapter 17

GALAD KILLED VALDA AAAAAHHHHHH that scene was so unexpected and so satisfying!!!

this is the first we’ve seen of galad since book 5 if i’m not mistaken. i would’ve liked to see him have more pov throughout so we could get a feel for what it’s like for him among the whitecloaks and see his perspective starting to shift as he realizes that many whitecloaks are not as righteous as they claim to be. i don’t care about sevanna or galina or alviarin or elaida or those random aes sedai hunting black ajah inside the tower or this fuckin ituralde dude or whatever other sideplots have been eating up screentime, i want to see my trakand boys! they are the only secondary characters who deserve pov!

i’m manifesting that this will be the book of trakand boys turning on their Chosen Groups to do what’s right. i know gawyn will find a way out of his pickle and turn on the tower and the younglings and maybe help egwene escape the tower. i know he will! i believe in him! (but since gawyn only shows up in prologues these days and we didn’t get him in this one, what if he’s not in the book at all???? oh perish the thought)

galad describes morgase as “the woman he regarded as his mother” 🥺 “he had thought he would feel satisfaction that his mother had been avenged, but all he felt was emptiness. valda’s death was not enough. nothing except morgase trakand alive again could be enough.” 😭😭😭😭 trakand family reunion when??

galad is now captain commander of all whitecloaks and plans to ally them with aes sedai at tarmon gai’don, though asunawa and the questioners have split off and will no doubt cause problems down the road. i wish galad would just go “the whole system is corrupt!” and destroy the entire whitecloak organization, but that’s asking too much of our Lawful Good boy lmao. makes me curious how this plotline will go down in the show because i’m still feeling the effects of show!whitecloaks being my first version of them, and show!whitecloaks are so vile and evil that it feels unsatisfying and hollow to see galad getting them to help our heroes instead of just burning the whole organization to the ground. much like how it feels seeing rand and perrin prepare to ally with seanchan. i guess it’s all an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation and showing how our heroes have to ally even with shitty groups for the sake of stopping the greater evil of the shadow, but still, i don’t like it!

an antagonistic character (suroth) is secretly a darkfriend? groundbreaking.

semirhage has killed the seanchan empress and imperial family and now all of seanchan is embroiled in chaos and civil war. thank you semirhage! if only tuon would conveniently die so then seanchan never gets another empress and can just collapse for good.

bunch of other random shit i don’t care about (and spaced out during the audiobook of) happens in the prologue. too many side characters. my crops are dying.

finally we reach egwene and some life is restored to my crops! she is being an absolute queen about her captivity. unbreakable indeed. she sees the tension between ajahs in the tower and is already thinking of how she can use that to the rebels’ advantage and planning to talk to siuan in TAR. very handy that TAR/dreamwalking can still be done while shielded! “she did not consider herself a prisoner either. she was carrying the battle into the heart of the tower itself. if she had had lips [in TAR], she would have smiled.” that’s my GIRL 😤🥰 maybe i don’t want gawyn to help her escape after all since she doesn’t WANT to escape, she’s got everything under control!

“demandred’s hook-nosed face carried an expression of anger that only made him more striking.” official confirmation that Demandred Is Hot, although maybe this was mentioned already. i’ve seen little of him so far but i feel like he’s my Forsaken Crush. i feel it coming. (we all have a Forsaken Crush, don’t lie.)

“in their own age when moridin had been called ishamael - there was no longer any doubt in [aran’gar’s] mind of who he was” official confirmation that moridin is ishamael! why am i gasping? i already knew that.

so it seems that the suspicion and tension in the white tower and perhaps the split itself is being caused and stoked by the forsaken. kinda don’t like that, ofc the shadow has to be established as a major threat but i wish more of the conflict in this series was genuinely caused by just regular ol human selfishness rather than going “surprise, it was a darkfriend/forsaken behind it the whole time!” so often.

"[aran’gar’s] appetites [for women] had not altered, only broadened [to include men, i think is the implication]” “[semirhage], too, took her pleasures where she found them” and graendal being into it when aran’gar hits on her. the forsaken being the Bad Bisexual Rep we deserve.

no for real there is SO much sexual tension between all the forsaken in this scene (the aforementioned 3, demandred, mesaana) i hope the show maintains and enhances this. just a group of hot evil people who hate and also want to bone every single one of the others.

“‘no!’ moridin snapped, fixing [cyndane] with a steady stare. ‘you would ‘accidentally’ kill him. the time and manner of al’thor’s death will be at my choosing. no one else.’ ... ‘no one else,’ moridin repeated in a hard voice.” “‘that goes for all of you. al’thor is mine. you will not harm him in any way!’” ishamael is not in on the aforementioned sexual tension because he’s too busy having the same one-sided sexual tension with rand he had for all the early books, god bless. (to refresh your memory)

“once, [aram] had seemed too good-looking for a man” usually i think of perrin as the straightest character in the series but then he’ll just come out with shit like this. the Oblivious Bisexual Rep we deserve.

perrin thinks of mat and has a vision of him talking to tuon! confirmed that this happens between the two of them too and not just them and rand. maybe we already saw that in the last book, i can’t remember anything anymore, there’s no room left in wot’s portion of my brain’s memory harddrive.

this is not new information but i have to mention how much i love that perrin’s full name is perrin t’bashere aybara, he and faile both took each other’s names :’)

perrin tells the seanchan that the asha’man know traveling. boy, i sure hope you’re not gonna let them learn traveling from any saidar-users or i swear to god!

“the bearer of this stands under my personal protection. in the name of the empress, may she live forever, give him whatever aid he requires in service to the empire and speak of it to none but me.” love how many different “not to worry, i have a permit [holds up a paper saying “i can do whatever i want”]” official papers there are in this universe jkfgj

faile mentions a fellow (female) gai’shain (arrela) who’s sleeping with a maiden. references to queerness have gotten much more common and explicit in these past couple books, which is nice to see! though always queer women, i don’t think we’ve had anything more than a “maybe that guy doesn’t like women like that” for queer men.

“colors whirled in [mat’s] brain, and for an instant, in his head, he saw rand and min standing beside a large bed, kissing. he stumbled and nearly tripped over his own boots. they had not been wearing any clothes! he would have to be careful thinking about rand...the colors swirled and resolved for a moment, and he stumbled again. there were worse things to spy on than kissing. very careful what he thought. light! the pair of guards...eyed him suspiciously. they probably thought he was drunk...he could have used a stiff drink right then.” JKDJFGKJHJJKDFJG the Disaster Bisexual Rep we deserve. poor mat. poor, poor mat. what a way to find out your lifelong crush has a new girlfriend. also, cinematic parallels to rand being Shook when he walked in on naked mat and melindhra after the darkhounds in tfoh.

now that i’ve moved on from laughing, i’m realizing this is another example of how little interest the characters have in each other these days. last mat knew, rand was romantically entangled with both elayne and avi, yet now he has a vision of him banging min (whom mat had no idea was ever on the table, and honestly i’m surprised he even recognizes her since i think they only met the once in baerlon and his memories of that time are so fuzzy) and doesn’t go “hey, what about elayne and avi?” or anything like that. granted, maybe that’s only because he’s trying not to keep thinking about rand jfkgjh but still. especially now that elayne is his bestie in addition to rand! surely he would have at least a passing care about the state of their relationship, after spending an entire book and a half determined to protect elayne for rand’s sake!

“many among the showfolk were already wondering why mat spent more time with tuon than with egeanin. wondering and disapproving.” you and me both, showfolk.

“with women, you always had to take chances. with a woman like tuon, ten chances a day, and never knowing the odds until it was too late.” or you could just not take any chances. you could just ditch her.

at this point i know i should just accept that this romance is happening and stop beating a dead horse about how ooc and illogical it is, but i literally cannot stop complaining and will make it everyone else’s problem for every recap post for the rest of the series jfgkh

mat waxes poetic about how beautiful tuon is and how much he loves making her smile and laugh and how much he dreams about kissing her. SINCE WHEN??!?!?!?!??!?!!! WHY??!?!?!?!?!!!!??? make it make sense!!!!

“[he dreamed about kissing her] never mind that she called him down as if they were already married.” cementing my theory that, narratively speaking, mat went from genuinely enjoying women’s company to finding them annoying and restrictive because of I Hate My Wife toxic heterosexual marriage culture informing his transition from slut (who enjoys women’s company) to husband (who complains about The Old Ball And Chain)

mat spanking joline 🤮🤮🤮 obviously it wasn’t okay for her to slap him unprovoked, but there is a huge difference in levels of both humiliation and physical pain between being slapped once and being spanked like a child dozens of times in front of people.

and inexplicably, mistress anan and the other aes sedai take mat’s side and say that joline deserved it??? where is mistress anan’s Woman Solidarity Against Mat the one time i actually wanted it?

everyone mat’s with now is making him worse. can you imagine him trying to pull this shit when elayne, nynaeve, or egwene were in the vicinity? they would’ve kicked his ass into next tuesday! although pre-WH mat would never have done this anyway. forget enjoying his plotline, even liking him as a person is becoming difficult at this point in the series. that wall falling on him turned him into a different person. look how they massacred my boy.jpg

“‘do you have any idea how these sul’dam did treat me [teslyn] when they did have me prisoner?’ ‘no, since you’ve never gone into detail beyond moaning over how horrible it was,’ joline replied dryly” it’s so gross how the others treat their stint as damane as a minor inconvenience. mat does this too with his whining about them being So Ungrateful To Him for getting them out of the seanchan’s hands and how he Deserves Their Respect. mat they are incredibly scared and traumatized! they have bigger things to worry about than kissing your ass! is this just the characters who don’t know what being damane is like being dicks, or is the narrative itself trying to retroactively make it seem not as bad in an attempt to excuse tuon and her romance with mat? all i know is that this is a stark contrast from how we saw egwene’s time as a damane treated in tgh. (update: i mention this briefly later in the post but in elayne’s pov we do see the damane system as traumatic and horrific again, so maybe it really is just mat’s pov making light of it bc he’s not a channeler rather than the narrative itself doing so.)

“‘you’ll want to be seeing to your own horses.’ mat wanted no such thing. the most wonderful thing about having coin was not what you could buy, but that you could pay others to do the work.” and what happened to all your disdain for nobles who act like that, mat??? in general i feel that mat’s laziness and hatred of doing work have been exaggerated in recent books. from a later chapter: “just the sight of [the laborers] made mat’s own back ache. they reminded him how much he hated work.” and there was another line in the same vein somewhere in this chapter chunk, but i can’t find it again. the jacket summary for this book says “to get [tuon] to safety, he must do what he hates worse than work” like, to say that in the SUMMARY. a lot of mat’s negative traits have been exaggerated in recent books and he’s starting to feel like a caricature of himself. everyone says that sanderson did that to mat in his books, but rj’s already started doing it if you ask me.

“he had to make her see him as something more than Toy. marriage to a woman with no respect for him would be like wearing a shirt of black-wasp nettles day and night. worse still, he had to make her care for him, or he would find himself forced to hide from his own wife to keep her from making him da’covale!” MAT. THAT IS NOT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP. JUST DITCH HER AND RIDE AWAY.

i’m thinking about what we were discussing on my last recap about how it would make so much more sense if mat/tuon was an arranged marriage (for example as part of perrin’s deal with the seanchan - mat then would accept the marriage for a logical and in-character reason, wanting to help his friend rescue his wife, rather than just. going along with it inexplicably as he does in canon) and yeah. his whole “since i’ll be stuck with marrying her, i need to find out what she’s like as a person and get her to like and respect me so my marriage won’t be awful” thing would make 100% sense if it was a marriage arranged for political/alliance reasons that he had no choice but to find a way to live with, but the way it is in canon, he completely brought all this on himself by refusing to ditch tuon when given a dozen easy opportunities to do so.

“‘i want you [aludra] to come with me. i know somebody who’ll be happy to pay for making as many of your dragons as you want. he can make every bellfounder from andor to tear stop casting bells and start casting dragons.’ avoiding rand’s name did not stop the colors from whirling inside his head and resolving for an instant into rand - fully clothed, thank the light - talking with loial by lamplight in a wood-paneled room...‘and if he isn’t interested,’ again the colors came, but he resisted, and they melted away” “‘the dragon reborn.’ the colors swirled and despite his fighting them again became rand and loial for a moment. this was not going to be as easy as it had seemed.” mat has SUCH A HARD TIME not thinking about rand compared to perrin, it is genuinely hilarious jfkgh also, i’m still waiting to see where the “mat is a bad friend to rand and always runs away from him” claims come from because even now he’s STILL thinking about going back to rand with new weapons that will help him!

“i will take you with any name you do care to use so long as you be my wife” not bayle domon out here being the king of romance 😭

“he soon told them to stop bringing him rumors about rand. fighting the colors in his head was too much effort, and he lost that fight as often as he won. sometimes it was all right, but sometimes he caught glimpses of rand and min, and it seemed those two were carrying on something awful.” mat is rand/min-phobic too, god bless. like come on, it’s bad enough i have to put up with their relationship in their own povs, now i have to hear about it in mat’s too??? poor mat. poorer me. also, crying over mat having such trouble Not Thinking About Rand that he has to institute a rule where nobody is allowed to talk to him about rand jkjfgh my man that is a CRUSH perrin is rand’s friend and fellow ta’veren too but has NEVER had this much trouble not thinking about him!

“the eelfinn had gathered the memories they had planted in his head, but how could they harvest memory from a corpse?...maybe they created some sort of link to any human who visited them, a link that allowed them to copy all of a man’s memories after that right up to the moment he died...burn him, the bloody foxes were inside his head right then!” okay mat just drew a TON of wild conclusions out of nowhere and i’m bewildered! i’m 99% sure they’re all true from vague things i’ve seen you guys say about the eelfinn, but i have no idea why mat suddenly realized all these things right then (all that happened was that he had a memory of dying and thought “huh, it’s weird i don’t have any memories of other men’s childhoods.”) i thought the memories were his past lives, not just random guys who visited the eelfinn in the past? how does he know this? how does he know the eelfinn harvest memories? how does he know they’re called eelfinn, for that matter? he’s never called them that before!

okay i looked it up and i discovered that the aelfinn and eelfinn were indeed first named in TSR, but it was by birgitte to perrin in TAR. i’m putting on a cone of shame for insisting so adamantly that they’ve never been named before, but in my defense i can’t be held accountable for paying attention to anything that happens in perrin chapters. and mat never heard about that since he hasn’t seen perrin since then, and from what little i could find on google mat first calls the snake people aelfinn in WH and there’s no explanation of when or how he learned that name. i’m positive he called them snaky/foxy people for several books after TSR. positive! surely i’m not just misremembering! maybe birgitte told him offscreen at some point in acos? anyway, i had to read this whole paragraph several times because mat just pulled so much random knowledge out of his ass and i’m still confused where he got it from lmao from what i can recall, he’s never once mentioned anything about memory-harvesting in his previous angsting about the eelfinn and has always thought about the memories as being from his own past lives.

“he was not sure he really wanted to dance away [from tuon] anymore” WHY NOT “but want and wish as he might, he was well and truly caught” YOU LITERALLY AREN’T, YOU COULD DITCH HER AT ANY TIME

“[tuon] saw [the aes sedai as] two escaped damane and a marath’damane, and she had no use for either until they were decently collared. her phrase, that.” mat does not seem bothered by this.

“sometimes [noal] interjected comments on mat’s play, that he was exposing himself on the left, that he was setting a fine trap on the right, and just when tuon looked ready to fall into it.” i love noal, he’s just a weird grandpa who came out of nowhere and just hangs around all the time being weird and awkward. i think i read that he’s jain farstrider, and even if i hadn’t it’s been kinda obvious with the way he talks about jain farstrider in this chunk of chapters and all the info he knows about far-off lands, but i’m interested to see how he ended up where he is now.

the three aes sedai come to tell tuon to return to seanchan and carry out a treaty for peace, and tuon collars all three of them. to his credit, mat attempts to talk her down and takes the collars off himself when she doesn’t listen and later buries the collars so no one can use them again, but he doesn’t react NEARLY as strongly as i would’ve wanted him to, or as the past mat even of winter’s heart would have.

mat watching tuon literally enslaving people: “she looked a bloody leopard staring at three tethered goats. and strangely, more beautiful than ever.” 🤮🤮

“[teslyn] looked as though she could not believe he would actually remove the [collar]” and does that give you a wakeup call about your recent behavior mat? no? okay.

“i want them to stop annoying me, toy.” “i think they’ll agree to that after this. you will agree, won’t you?” when joline says nothing: “‘i could let precious keep you for a few days until you change your mind.’ joline’s collar clicked open in his hands. ‘but i won’t.’” 🤮🤮🤮

like fr tuon tries to enslave the aes sedai for annoying her with attempts to broker peace between randland and the seanchan, and mat acts like both sides were equally in the wrong? he doesn’t even seem to care about the seanchan invading his home. tuon’s comfort is more important to him than the chance of stopping the seanchan, i guess.

mat spends the next day juggling for tuon and telling her jokes, like a fuckin court jester. i am almost at min levels of “please find some self-respect” although i don’t think it would ever be possible for any other character to fall THAT far. on the other hand, at least rand is worthy of being simped for!

some weird thing happens with a dead people sighting and then a peddler gets sucked into the pavement. no clue what just happened so i’m just gonna move on.

random sidetrack: how fun would it have been if mat and elayne had been with the circus at the same time and he got to watch her tightrope act? with her sexy outfit? i wish!!!

“[if aes sedai found out tuon was a seanchan lady] in all likelihood, tuon would be on her way to tar valon before he could blink. as a ‘guest,’ of course, to help stop the fighting. no doubt many would say that would be for the good, that he should hand her over himself and tell them who she really was” me, i’m many “but he had given his word.” UGH mat keeping his promise to rand to protect elayne = sexy! mat keeping his promise to protect tuon = not sexy!

“‘i shall probably make [tar valon] my capital. i shall have you show me the city, toy. you have been there?’ light! she was a tough little woman. gorgeous, but definitely tough as nails.” haha nothing like your girlfriend talking about her plans to conquer your entire continent, am i right lads? what a quirky and sexy flaw!

“‘there’s no need for that, with me or anyone else,’ [egeanin] drawled, bending to take amathera by the shoulders and draw her to her feet. amathera rose slowly, hesitantly, and kept her eyes down until egeanin put a hand beneath her chin and raised her head gently. ‘you look me in the eyes. you look everyone in the eyes.’” so good to see egeanin making a genuine effort to change her ways and treat everyone as an equal! if only tuon could get the same character development. or ANY character development.

“[juilin] disliked any seanchan, for what they had done to amathera.” “there was a hint of a challenge in his gaze. it was clear that to him, egeanin had further to go to prove she no longer saw amathera as stolen property.” JUILIN IS THE ONLY ONE IN THIS GODDAMN PLOTLINE WITH SOME GODDAMN SENSE AND A CONSCIENCE!!! THANK YOU JUILIN finally a solid reason other than “i think his name is pretty” to explain his presence among my list of favorite side characters.

“‘and when [atha’an miere women] are out of sight of land-’ [noal] cut off abruptly and cleared his throat, eyeing olver, who was stacking the snakes a foxes on the board’s corners. ‘what do they do then?’ olver asked. ‘why...’ noal rubbed his nose with a gnarled finger. ‘why, they scramble about the rigging so nimbly you’d think they had hands where their feet should be. that’s what they do.’ olver oohed, and noal gave a soft sigh of relief.” finally someone is being age-appropriate with olver! thank you noal! good grandpa! or actually great-grandpa, since thom is grandpa and mat is dad.

thom finally reveals the letter from moiraine, which is written in the most dramatic and cryptic fashion imaginable, bless her.

“‘my dearest thom.’ who would have thought moiraine, of all people, would address old thom merrilin so?” not any reader, that’s for sure, mat jdkjfgh i’m glad he’s as baffled by this ship as we all are.

“mat may refuse. he does not hold me in the affection you seem to” momraine 💔💔 “if you see lan again, tell him that all of this is for the best. his destiny follows a different path from mine. i wish him all happiness with nynaeve.” 💔 but also ❤️

olver just so happens to remember that birgitte just so happened to tell him that the eelfinn live in the tower of ghenjei, and when noal describes what legends say it looks like, mat just so happens to remember that he just so happened to pass it on domon’s boat in eotw. birgitte also just so happened to tell olver how to get into the tower since there’s no opening. all very convenient.

“he had never really trusted moiraine, or liked her either. only fools trusted aes sedai. but then, if not for her, he would be back in the two rivers mucking out the barn and tending his da’s cows. or he would be dead. and there old thom sat, saying nothing, just staring at him. that was the rub. he liked thom. oh, blood and bloody ashes. ‘burn me for a fool,’ he muttered. ‘i’ll go.’” ❤️❤️❤️ mat truly becomes 10x better the moment he’s away from tuon or the 3 aes sedai.

tuon wants mat to take her to a tavern, which is a long-held matlayne dream of mine! how dare she! tho i will say that tuon going “so when is there going to be a fight??” the whole time they’re there is hilarious jfkgjh

when mat is afraid the seanchan farmers in the town might recognize tuon: “toy, i have met many farmers while visiting the country, but they very properly kept their eyes on the ground even if i allowed them to stand.” mat went into conniptions over Arrogant Nobles whenever elayne so much as lifted her chin too far for his liking, yet tuon says shit like this and he is SILENT, even in his thoughts. i hate it here!!

from a little later: “‘nobles...’ he trailed off, clearing his throat. he could hardly tell her nobles were fools with their noses so high in the air they could not see where they were stepping. she was who and what she was, after all.” and yet you never had a problem saying such things to elayne even though she’s the most down-to-earth noble in the entire series and is your ally and your friends’ friend rather than an invader of your homeland.

when thom talks about how unfortunate it is that people don’t mind the seanchan bc that means it’ll be harder to get them out: “mat glanced at tuon. how did she feel hearing thom talk about her people so?” WHY DO YOU GIVE A SHIT HOW SHE FEELS!!! HER PEOPLE INVADED YOUR HOMELAND!!! GOD!!!!

“[the seanchan] mean to kill [tuon] when they find her [bc they think she’s an impostor]” cool, let them.

“he was going to do whatever was necessary to make sure she was not in danger of being broken. whatever it took.” WHY??!?!?!?!!

mat almost dies because he Can’t Kill A Woman, deep sigh. tuon kills her for him, thank you tuon for having at least a modicum of sense unlike some people.

“even rand was not ta’veren enough to make this happen. the colors whirled, and [perrin] splintered them unformed.” mat: you can stop thinking about rand? perrin: what, like it’s hard?

“‘if this is what happens to you when you get with child,’ aviendha said, adjusting the dark shawl looped over her arms, ‘i think i will never have any.’” oh boy do i have news for you

“the high-canted saddle of her dun pushed her bulky aiel skirts high enough to bare her stockinged legs to the knee” i should’ve been keeping track of the number of times elayne has remarked upon aviendha’s legs being bared while riding. it’s been a Lot of times.

“elayne had insufficient soldiers to hold six leagues of wall” “her greatest fear at present was that [arymilla] would succeed in bribing [mercenary] companies still inside the walls” “‘you [birgitte] don’t have to lead every counterttack yourself.’ ‘and who else is there? my officers are inexperienced boys or else men who came out of retirement...except for the mercenary captains, anyway, and there isn’t one i’d trust without someone looking over his shoulder. which brings us back to: who else but me?’” “she could not afford birgitte falling over from exhaustion. light, she wished gareth bryne were there. egwene needed him, but so did she.” and *i* wish mat and the band were here!!! goddammit!

“this siege hardly gave her time to mourn her mother. or lini, her old nursemaid. rahvin had murdered her mother, and likely lini had died trying to protect her. white-haired and thin with age, lini would not have backed down even for one of the forsaken.” TRAKAND FAMILY REUNION (including lini ofc) WHEN???

“and how would you have stopped me?” “by tying you up and having [aviendha] sit on you” birgitte says as IF elayne would’ve considered it a bad thing to be tied up and sat on by aviendha

“she wished she knew how mat was.” MATLAYNE RIGHTS ❤️❤️❤️❤️ “and dear thom. and poor little olver. every night she offered prayers that they had escaped the seanchan safely.” man i WISH 😭😭

we see elayne having pregnancy-induced channeling troubles, interesting. this will definitely cause problems later.

“smiling, aviendha turned her face up to let the rain run down her cheeks. ‘i love to watch water falling from the sky.’” 🥺🥺

some dude guybon, who is “little short of beautiful,” shows up with 10,000 soldiers and elayne promotes him to birgitte’s second in command on the spot although she’s never met him before. please let the suddenly-and-conveniently-appearing hot guy be genuinely there to help and not a darkfriend, please. also, i can think of another hot young general with lots of soldiers who would be of great help to elayne right now and who would have no chance of being a darkfriend 😤

maybe Woman Solidarity really is a thing, bc while male readers are always complaining about elayne Being Too Reckless and Endangering Herself Needlessly while pregnant, i’m empathizing hard with her frustration over everyone treating her like glass for being pregnant and her stubborn determination to prove that she can still do things and am of the opinion that she has done nothing wrong ever in her life.

i feel like elayne’s mood swings are just normal human emotions for someone under a great deal of stress and poor elayne is just gaslighting herself (and to some extent being gaslit by others) into thinking it’s all pregnancy mood swings.

100x more empathy for damane and disgust for slavers in 1 page of elayne crossing paths with a random freed damane than in several chapters of mat hanging out with his own allies who were once damane.

“men or women, aiel wept unashamed when they felt the need” aiel culture says fuck toxic masculinity 😌

“‘it’s custom in seanchan to strike a girl’s name from her family’s rolls when she’s collared, and the poor woman feels she has no right to the name she was born with. jillari was given with the collar, but she wants to keep that.’ ‘there are more reasons to hate the seanchan than i can count,’ elayne said heatedly.” where is this energy in mat’s chapters where it is most needed????

“elayne reached out without looking, and found aviendha’s hand waiting to take hers, a comforting grip. she squeezed back, unable to imagine the grief of losing aviendha. they shared a quick glance, and aviendha’s eyes mirrored her own feelings. had she really once thought aiel faces impassive and unreadable?” ROMANCE!!!! MARRIAGE!!!!

i hate that warder bonds between 2 women are inexplicably and illogically Different than warder bonds between a man and a woman, and i especially hate that the difference is that the emotion mirroring is stronger and the 2 women are always setting each other off, because Women Be Overemotional And Irrational, of course.

one of the sea folk accidentally blurts out criticism of another sea folk in front of elayne and is then flustered about it. elayne is ta’veren, i tell you!

“elayne threw back her head and screamed as loudly as she could, a howl of pure outrage and fury. she screamed until her lungs were empty, leaving her panting.” JSKDJFGHKJHKJ GOOD FOR HER i laughed SO hard at that. elayne’s primal screams of rage are something that can be so personal. (it happened once before in tfoh at the circus and i loved it just as much then, this poor woman really deserves to Scream on occasion. for that “this piece of media is allowed 1 usage of ‘fuck,’ where would you put it?” meme, i would definitely give the 1 allotted fuck to elayne.)

“‘do you think i should wear wetlander clothes, elayne, since we are going to meet these mercenaries?’ [aviendha] asked in tones of great reluctance...elayne hid a smile of her own, no easy task since she wanted to laugh. her sister pretended to disdain silks, but she seldom missed an opportunity to wear them. ‘if you can bear it, aviendha,’ she said gravely.” THIS IS SO PURE aviendha getting into fancy clothes sparks joy, min getting into fancy clothes does not spark joy. (because avi’s is about her assimilating into wetlander culture and finding things to like about it, and also being given the opportunity to explore her own sense of style for the first time after spending much of her life in the “uniform” of a maiden or wise one, whereas min was happily settled in her own style and changed it purely to mold herself into her idea of what rand would think is hot.)

avi is careless about being naked in front of the maids but elayne adjusts her own towel carefully because “essande saw her in her skin every day, and sephanie too, but it was nothing to let happen without reason” she does not say a peep about any concerns over AVI seeing her naked without reason though 👀👀👀

elayne on pregnancy soreness: “oh, how she wished rand were near enough to share the full effect of her bond with him.” GIRL SAME

in describing the sitting room, elayne mentions the table “where she and aviendha took most of their meals” and all the books in the room, saying that “they often read here of an evening.” the domesticity of it all 😭😭 they’re married!!

avi turns out to have a skill, possibly a Talent, for knowing the function of ter’angreal just by touching them. handy! tho i wonder why this hasn’t come up before bc i think she’s been helping elayne with the ebou dar ter’angreal for a while. also, what happened to avi’s other Talents of unweaving and of seeing weave residues? we haven’t heard about those after their brief time of relevance in POD. i guess that while egwene, elayne, and nynaeve are relatively solid in their Talents, avi’s just a catch-all for whatever random Talents are necessary for the plot at the current moment lmao

“‘oh, light!’ [aviendha] exclaimed, flinging her arms around elayne. ‘i never thought! i have great toh to you! i never meant to endanger you or your babes! never!’ ... ‘you have no toh to me. it was you i was thinking of. you could have died, or burned yourself out.’ aviendha pulled back enough to look into elayne’s eyes. what she saw there reassured her, for a small smile curved her lips.” MARRIED

THE WISE ONES ARE TAKING AVI AWAY FROM ELAYNE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO this was my LAST ship standing i can’t lose it!!!!! i’m devastated!!!!!!!! how will i survive with NO ships to sustain me??? i know that cauthor and randlayne reunions won’t happen until book 14, so dear GOD the matlayne reunion better be soon!!!!

“aviendha leaped away from the embrace, flushing furiously” “elayne took her sister’s hand in a firm grip, and aviendha squeezed back” “elayne wanted to run after aviendha too, to grasp every moment with her” MARRIED

rand can send letters via asha’man to bael but not to elayne or avi?? good god! MIN got letters from him when he was away in illian, and she already knew where he was and what he was up to (and she whined that it was only 2 short letters and that rand was too busy for her).

avi: “i will try to visit you [elayne] as often as i can.” nadere: “strange to speak casually of visiting from so far. to cover leagues, hundreds of leagues, in a step.” are people finally going to take advantage of Traveling to hang out with each other while in two different locations and plotlines?? too much to ask for rand to do this with elayne, of course. (elayne can’t since she doesn’t know where exactly he is, but he knows she’ll be in caemlyn for the foreseeable future - and he’s just been chilling in that manor in tear for at least a few days and has had plenty of time to pop back to caemlyn for a visit but just hasn’t! dammit!) anyway, i hope we actually will get to see avi visit elayne in the future because i cannot HANDLE the prospect of them ALSO being separated for the rest of the series. my last ship standing dammit!!!

when elayne gives avi angreal to take with her: “‘you shame me, sister. i have no farewell gift to give in return.’ ‘you give me your friendship. you gave me a sister.’ elayne felt a tear slide down her cheek. she essayed a laugh, but it was a weak, tremulous thing. ‘how can you say you have nothing to give? you’ve given me everything.’” ROMANCE!!!! MARRIAGE!!!!!!! genuinely one of, if not THE, most romantic lines in the entire series to date! you could take all of avilayne’s canon interactions and just change “sister” to “wife” and it legit would come across as such a strong romance without a single kiss ever needing to be exchanged. like yeah female friendships in this series are much more intimate than male friendships are allowed to be, but even then avilayne is SO different from and more intense than all other female friendships in the series. not even mat would want to bet against the odds of their relationship being made romantic in the show, now that i’ve seen how INSANELY homoerotic it is in the books, i consider it an absolute guarantee that the show will make the abundance of subtext into actual text.

“tears glistened in aviendha’s eyes too. despite the others watching, she put her arms around elayne and hugged her hard.” we know how huge it is for an aiel to hug somebody in front of others!! “‘i will miss you, sister,’ she whispered. ‘my heart is as cold as night.’” avi’s not gonna let elayne outdo her with romantic lines! “‘and mine, sister,’ elayne whispered, hugging back equally hard. ‘i will miss you too. but you will be allowed to visit me sometimes. this isn’t forever.’ ‘no, not forever. but i will still miss you.’” “‘may you always find water and shade, sister,’ elayne replied. the aiel way had a finality about it, so she added, ‘until i see your face again.’ and as quickly as that, they were gone. as quickly as that, she felt very alone. aviendha’s presence had become a certainty, a sister to talk to, laugh with, share her hopes and fears with, but that comfort was gone.” 😭😭😭😭

****spoilers for the series endgame in terms of me referencing characters who i know survive the last battle**** it has finally occurred to me to be very worried about the future for avilayne. when avi becomes a full wise one, will she have to stay with the aiel permanently? will she have to go back to live in the waste? i am PRAYING that after the last battle enough aiel decide to remain in the wetlands and caemlyn specifically (i mean unless the aiel all die in the last battle since their destruction is prophesized, oh fuck so many things to worry about!) so that avi can be a wise one to the aiel in caemlyn and still live with elayne! rand is included in all this too, of course, but i’m less certain of him ending up in caemlyn post-last battle since iirc the amol epilogue summary i read back in december while the show was airing only said that he was gonna wander the world (pls don’t tell me anything more specific, i already regret everything i DO know about the series endgame lmao i wouldn’t have read the epilogue summary if i’d known i would read the books, i had no intention of reading them and figured it’d take 10 years to find out how it ends once the show got there, and i read a cauthor oneshot that had a brief post-canon scene of mat thinking about rand in a way implying he was dead (yes it was tagged as post-canon spoilers, yes it’s my own fault for going “that sign can’t stop me because i can’t read” and reading the fic anyway) and i was like RAND DIES??? SAY SIKE RIGHT THE FUCK NOW so OBVIOUSLY i had to look up for sure whether it was true, i couldn’t bear it!)

“elayne did not realize her shoulders had slumped until she straightened them. her sister was gone, yet she had a city to defend and a throne to gain. duty would have to sustain her now.” THE FACT THAT THIS IS THE EXACT SAME WAY SHE THINKS ABOUT RAND

“her reasons for not countering [the rumor that mellar is the babydaddy] had changed - she no longer had need to protect her babes, rand’s babes” why not?? they would still be in danger if it was known they were the dragon reborn’s kids. and elayne has known the whole time that min’s viewing said they would be born healthy but this didn’t prevent her initially not wanting it known rand is the dad.

the palace is changing, corridors moving and vanishing and appearing. maybe related to that thing of the guy mat saw sink into the pavement.

“a falcon [map marker] showed where the goshien were. or had been. were they gone yet? [elayne] slipped the falcon into her belt pouch. aviendha was very much a falcon.” ❤️❤️❤️

“‘they’re gone, or going,’ elayne told [birgitte]. there would be visits. aviendha was not gone forever.” 😭❤️

in all rand’s “i’m so dangerous to my loved ones!” fretting, why does he never once think about the fact that hundreds of asha’man, many of whom may well be traitors to him (and darkfriends tho i’m not sure if he knows that much), are right on elayne’s doorstep because he put the school there?

“again someone seemed to think she had answers she did not. but then, that was what it meant to be queen. you were always expected to have an answer, to find one. that was what it meant to be aes sedai.” baby ❤️

“she often found herself staring at a page without seeing a word, thinking of her sister, or starting to say something to aviendha before remembering that she was not there. she felt very lonely, which was ridiculous. sephanie stood in a corner...eight guardswomen were standing outside the door to the apartments...but none of them was aviendha.” elayne misses her wife!!! so do i!! i will say, i’m not pitting avilayne and randlayne against each other bc i love both equally and it’s not randlayne’s fault that the narrative robs them at every turn, but it’s kinda hilarious how elayne is so much more cut up about her “sister’s” departure than her boyfriend’s and babydaddy’s. (granted rand’s departure is no longer fresh and she was much sadder and more worried about him and missing him more in previous books, in this book her entire chapter chunk has been one Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day during which she only thinks about rand to go “burn him for knocking me up!” because she’s in a bad mood.)

elayne cries upon hearing that reanne corly was murdered and chides herself over Pregnancy Mood Swings, sweetheart crying over a friend’s murder is NORMAL! you’re allowed to have emotions!

[graygiantess]

Just out of curiosity, what about Loustat makes you not a fan? What is appealing about Devil's minion?

Hey Nonny!

Thanks for your questions!

My answers turned out longer than even I expected them to be so I put them below the break so people don’t have to scroll for a full minute if it comes across their dash and they're not interested in reading it. 🙈

Loustat

I'm just kind of burned out on them as a ship and on cannon-compliant Loustat fics. I wrote some more about why here with regards to fics. I might get back into them as the show and their story progresses.

I love the intricacies of their relationship and how solidly married they are in the show and how the way Louis views Lestat is in part influenced by how he views himself and his own relationship to his own vampirism.

I'd love to see more of their happy times together and them being a relatively happy family with Claudia, and those are the kind of fics I'm still interested in. The show is so rich and saturated and I really think it elevates everything from the books to a higher level, including Loustat.

But at the point in the story where we are now - at the end of S1 ep7/halfway through IWTV book - they just have no business being together, and I'm in no rush to see them get back together on the show.

They got violently divorced for a reason.

I'm convinced the show will make the reunion everything everyone has ever wanted (because the writers and actors are that good), but they need some time apart for both their sakes.

It's the whole 'right person at the wrong time' thing either Sam or Jacob mentioned, though I think a more complete description is that they're both not yet the people they need to be in order for things to be able to work out between them.

Louis needs to figure out who he would be if there was no Claudia and there was no Him (and no Armand), and Lestat needs to be in the dump for a while and think real hard about what he did to end up there.

I love Lestat as a character but I don't particularly like him as a person in S1 (which in this fandom is somehow a controversial stance, when it really shouldn't be). He did some really terrible things and even Lestat agrees that he deserved to get patricided.

And they kill him much harder in the book than they did on the show despite arguably having a much more solid 'case' against him in the show than they did in the book.

Which might also be part of the 'problem'. The writers will have to work really hard to get me to root for Louis taking Lestat back after all the shit he pulled.

Right now, my top 3 ships involving Louis are: Louis/therapy, Louis/Hot Girl Era and Louis/A Nice Boring Man.

But that’s not the type of story this is and Nice Boring Men are not Louis's type, and would make for a much less interesting viewing experience.

(Though I suppose the interview is some variation on Louis/therapy and I haven’t forgotten that casting call for brave homosexual men in the park.)

For now I'm just going to be in my little Armandaniel corner and even smaller Armandiago corner and come May 12th I'll be ready with my popcorn and my screaming crying throwing up gifs to let the tale emotionally destroy seduce me.

Devil’s Minion

Devil’s Minion/Armandaniel are toxic as fuck. Make no mistake. I'm fully prepared for them to be 'worse' than Loustat on the show because their chase didn't start off as a courtship. Armand is going to do some absolutely heinous things to that boy (not to mention the crimes he's about to commit in Paris) and Daniel is going to say a lot more out of pocket shit than he's already done in S1.

It's going to be nowhere near as fluffy as I write them.

They're stalker/victim to lovers, which is a dynamic I would never fuck with in any other genre, because ew (especially in straight ships where the patriarchy gives you an extra layer of power imbalance for free).

And I absolutely hate to be that bitch, but it's gothic horror and they're peak fucked-up gothic romance. 😭

And they're at least semi-self aware of the fact that their relationship is a fucked-up co-dependent hot mess, which somehow makes it more palatable to me. Because I think that's something that Loustat - and Louis in particular - are still struggling to come to terms with about their own relationship, and I don't know if they ever fully get there.

The powerful immortal x just some guy dynamic that I wrote about in my answer to an earlier ask is really what does it for me in terms of making this my favorite TVC ship.

Because Armandaniel also have absolutely no business being together and they're so bad for each other but also so perfect.

This is a very nuance-free, reductive summary, but Armand grows up to people seeing him and thinking "Wow, so pretty, I must possess him". Daniel sees Armand and thinks "Wow, so scary and off-putting, I must be possessed by him". And that's (part of) why Armand likes him back!

Armand has had such a shitty life and he's so done after Louis leaves him. And then he meets this weird little human who sees the darkness in him and wants him despite/because of that and isn't afraid to sometimes call him an immortal idiot, and he reminds Armand that there is beauty in the mundane and it makes Armand want to go on living.

Meanwhile Daniel doesn’t see human life as worth living, doesn’t understand that immortality is a curse and wants that.

And Armand will never be human again and once Daniel becomes a vampire it does actually fuck up what they had, just like Armand always feared.

How beautiful and tragic and doomed can it get?

There's a lot of similarities and parallels between Loustat and Armandaniel and Lestat-Armand and Louis-Daniel are widely understood to be each other’s respective foils. They're all navigating the same themes and issues in their own flawed ways.

I just like how Armandaniel do it slightly better. And because we don't know what we're getting from them in the show yet, it's easier for me to put my own spin on it when I'm writing fic or making feral screeching noises at Armand gifs.

Because right now my perception is based off the The Devil’s Minion chapter in QotD, filtered through my fangirly pink glasses.

In the show we've only seen Armand as Armand for about 5 minutes, 3 of which were in the S2 previews and trailers. And their interactions in S1 are 95% Daniel talking down to Armand because he thinks the power imbalance is skewed in his (Daniel’s) favor.

Which brings me back to likeabilty as a character vs. likeability as a person.

Show Daniel is not likeable. He is a miserable old cunt coming at both Louis and Armand (and Claudia!) from a position of white privilege.

But that doesn’t stop him from being absolutely fascinating as a character.

And, unlike in real life, being fascinating is much more important in a fictional character than being likeable is. Which brings me back to Lestat. 😊

Plus, the The Devil’s Minion chapter is just such a fever dream and an absolute treasure trove for fic writers.

They travel all over the world so DM Era fics can set in literally any location.

I wrote about Armand getting hyperfixated on toothpaste and that works because he gets fixated on much weirder things in canon. You can throw basically any special interest and niche hobby at him and it'll still be plausible.

Human AU where Armand is a billionaire who wears designer suits and only eats organic homemade food? Yes, of course! Human AU where Armand wears the exact same outfit every day and only eats Poptarts and one very specific kind of pizza from one specific restaurant? I buy it!

So much to write about.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 🙈

[shameonmeeguiltypleasure]

Seducing Mr Bridgerton Chapter 11 Progress update/Author Rambles:

So it's Friday for me, which means I'm obvs gonna forget a week of work with some good ole whiskey.

In saying that, I have to confess....

SMB chapter 11 is killing me!!!

I hate everything I write, nothing is flowing the way I pictured it in my head.

Ive had like 7 restarts and they always end the same way for the siblings......Tears,Violence,hurt and just straight up bullshit.

Like.... Colin has REASONS for his actions!!

But obvs... In SMB Ant,Ben and El no longer really know Colin as well as they think. Which is understandable, but it's not fair of them to like.... Not trust him to know his own feelings and to invalidate his truth just because they're so sure he's got that wanderer curse.

I wanted chapter 11 to UNITE the siblings!! To have Colin remember that he CAN go to his siblings for help or whatever - that while they might give him shit for his choices they have his back.

But so far, no matter what I write, someone always ends up either at gun point with the trigger pulled, bloody & bruised, or saying some really unfixable bullshit that will destroy a sibling completely.

Idk guys, Chapter 11 was supposed to be super simple and easy..... But nothing is working and it's frustrating me 😭🥲🥹😤😮‍💨

..... I think Im going to have to completely skip the sibling encounter and go straight to an evening adventure for Lady Whistledown and one Sir Lee Anders.....

Just deeply disappointed the characters don't want to cooperate this chapter 😔

On the other hand..... Maybe a Featherington sibling reunion could prove better?

Idk..... Would you guys be satisfied with Prudence & Phillipa coming to visit?

I'm low-key hoping to include Eloise and Colin's talk in TSPWP/ my version of Eloise's story...... Maybe it'll work better if we get to read her perspective of Polin's relationship and why she reacts the way she does.....

😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

Or maybe I should just skip directly to the Macasfield(?) Ball and continue building on the sexual tension/horny behavior of Polin?

Ugh..... Too many decisions.....Any and All suggestions/advice/inputs on which direction I should take will be greatly welcomed.

Just keep in mind I'm ultimately going to be sefish and choose what I feel is best for the fic and characters moving forward 😂

✨Sorry not sorry ✨

[sohcah-toa]

if- IF you're feeling up to it- can i please get some just aggresive childe smut 😭 pls ive haven't seen any like aggresive smut in a while and i want some plus its just been a shit day 🙏

also ur work is so good, if u haven't heard me say it enough 💖🦋

of course! thank u so much for the support 💞 and i hope you have great days ahead 🤗 im here if u need to talk!

Chance | toa

NSFW | childe x reader | aggressive semi-public sex | modern au | spanking | degradation

"Childe, y/n" Zhongli greeted the both of you, he was one of your best friends "How are you both?" Zhongli hasn't seen you both ever since you got married with Childe. The host of the event finished talking, letting you converse with each other.

"Fi—ne" Childe answered with a grunt, Zhongli didn't mind since he was always the weird one. It was normal. The truth was your were fondling Childe's balls from underneath the table.

"Weird as usual" Scaramouche snorted as he took a sip of water

You've been seducing and touching Childe this whole time, making him go crazy with just a few touches. Seducing him when no one's looking.

Childe was extremely embarrassed but at the same time turned on. He didn't know how to act in front of your friends. You both were at a college reunion in your old school.

"Stop" Childe mouthed you, anymore and he wouldn't be able to control himself.

You just giggled. Everybody was paying attention on the stage, Xinyan was now performing. Beidou laughed at Ningguang while she starts destroying the stage. Beidou has gotten Ningguang extremely drunk and this is the outcome.

Childe started to rub your thighs, feeling himself lose control. He leaned in to whisper in your ear "I'll fuck your brains out if I ever get the chance tonight"

He kissed you softly, leaving you wanting more before pulling back. You start to stroke his dick, you observed him and you just know he was feeling so good.

You started to unzip his pants, he glared at you begging you don't. But you didn't stop, you started stroking it. Luckily, you were sitting at the very back, nobody can see you.

"Fuck!" Childe accidentally blurted out, you immediately stop because some people turned to look at your table "I-I uh hurt my hand! Let's go my wonderful darling spouse!" he zipped his pants before standing up, grabbing your hand then walked away. He pulled you, you have no idea where he was going but you followed him. To be fair, he didn't exactly know where to go either, he just knows that he wanted to be alone with you.

After a turn, he immediately pushed you on the wall then started kissing you roughly, he loosened his tie. He groped and played with your chest while kissing you roughly, inserting his tongue "I told you don't try me"

You whimpered from under him, you hugged his waists, your other leg embracing it so you could feel his erect dick on your crotch "F-fuck I thought we'd never leave there"

He started licking your neck, sucking it and kissing it from time to time. He was breathing heavily, basically trying to inhale you. You start rubbing on his dick and his grunts went rougher. He grinded on you while you still both have your clothes on.

"Shit" He muttered from under his breath. He turned to look up and read 'infirmary', he thought nobody would be there at this time of the night.

He immediately grabbed your hand and pulled you in, not even bothering the lock the door. He quickly pinned you on the wall, carried both your legs and started dry humping you while kissing.

"You're so wild today" You whispered with a giggle, hugging and kissing his neck.

"You made me this way" he whispered back, breathing heavily "Fuck I can't take it anymore" he let you down and took your clothes off, everything. You were hungry for him too so you took his clothes off.

After a ton of clothes being thrown everywhere, he carried you bridal style and tossed you on the hospital bed "Fuck me, Childe" you called each other darling but when fucking, he prefers you to call him with his name.

"I'll fuck you alright" He quickly started to position himself from above you, not even bothering to prep you up. He was that hungry.

You moaned loudly as you grip the sheets from beside you, you feel him deep inside your hole "Childe!" you moaned, you know he likes it when you call his name. His dick moved in and out of you, he leaned in to suck your nipples and play with it. You stroke his hair, feeling it tickle on your chest.

"Fuck, you're a fucking slut, you know that?" He grunted, he knows you like it when he treats you like that. He then flipped you on all fours, he spanked your ass, earning a scream "Slut!" he kept on spanking you as he thrusts deeper and faster.

You were breathing heavily, moaning and holding on to the metal as he thrusts deep inside of you "C-Childe! You feel so fucking good! Fuck — me!"

His grunts were uncontrollable, your skin reddening from his tight grip on your ass, just so he could go deeper. You feel him balls deep inside you. He liked fucking you in doggy style, watching your back arch with every thrust he makes. Hearing your moans and sweet screams. He leaned in forward to whisper to you "Is this what you wanted?" he whispered, reaching for your chest, slapping your nipples.

"Y-Yes" You moaned, you were salivating, you've been craving for his cock for the past hour "Make me cum please darling"

He spanked your ass again as he leaned back, watching his own erect cock go in and out of your whole "What did you call me?"

"C-Childe — please make me cum" You whined, you move your hips from time to time so you could match his pace, so he could go deeper. He started to rub your genitalia from behind. You screamed and squirmed all around "Shit shit shit"

You hear him grunt "C-Cum with me, cum in my dick" he was going as fast as he can that the bed started creaking. The way your skins collide with one another "Fuck I'm going to breed you"

All the different sounds echoed in the infirmary, especially your loud moans that's begging Childe to go faster and deeper inside you.

"I'm cumming! C-Childe c-cumming" You muttered, your legs trembled as you let yourself climax, you on the bed but this doesn't stop Childe from thrusting inside you.

He focused on his thrusts and just then you feel something warm inside you, he stayed there for a while, laying on top of your back, breathing heavily into your neck "Fuck, I want more of you' he was caressing your ass.

You were breathing heavily too, you feel that his dick was still erect inside you. You know this isn't over yet.

;

"They definitely fucked" Scaramouche said to the embarrassed Zhongli "Come on! We're adults now! So what if they fucked?"

"T-They used to do this in college too" Zhongli sighed

— END ☆